Its fairly clear that men and women are different. In the world of connection - marketing, PR, comms, sales, etc - we don’t often take this seriously enough. So, I found it interesting to see a survey done on men and women and their responses to comedy. Apparently, men don’t find female comedians funny because their sense of humour is intrinsically different.
“In the week that readers of lads’ mag FHM voted the funniest women as ‘none of them’, research by global advertising agency JWT points to a divide in what the genders find funny.”
The main point of difference: “Women’s main source of humour is from the everyday, the little issues, stuff they observe and that happens to them. Men want to be funny to show off and to get people to admire them. It’s all about scoring points, whereas with women humour is much more a way of creating an attachment, bonding and getting intimacy with people.”
Read a report about this from the UK comedy guide here, or something from UK The Independent (online edition) here.
So this is why my wife doesn’t think I’m funny? I read all the linked articles and nowhere did it confirm that my wife’s ability to laugh at me diminishes proportionately to how late I arrive home from a guy’s night out. I must get infected with ‘guy humour’ while I’m out?
Humour and comedy is a strange thing. In fact I read once somewhere (cant recall where) that in order to find things funny, you have to be able to thing laterally. This is because the funny part about comedy is in the unexpected outcome. Interesting…
I guess if I think about it, my favourite comedians are mostly men, apart from Ellen De Generes, she can be pretty funny. I suppose thats why most comedy bars are full of guys who have dragged their wives or girlfriends along, my wife as an example, cant stand my taste in comedy(then again I like things like the Goons, Fawlty Towers, Steven Wright, Jeff Foxworthy, Robin Williams etc and such)
So, maybe we all need to start listening to female comedians, maybe we will understand women better then…
My wife believes my humour, derived from sideways thinking, is “an acquired taste”. But she is laughing, now…
BTW, I saw a Bob Hope special several years ago, in which he hosted about ten female comediens. One of them had a novel approach — the jokes could be divided into four parts. The first thing she said was a bit of narrative, a set-up, if you will. Second was some crack about it, which you -think-is ‘the joke’. #3 She mumbled something hillarious! #4 Then she mumbled somehting else. At this point I had tears in my eyes. This went on for a few minutes with several more jokes. I think she was the funniest comedian, male or female, that I have ever heard.